A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan

With The Teachings of Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda chronicled a journey toward enlightenment under the tutelage of Yaqui Indian guru Don Juan. Having sold more than eight million copies of his books around the world, Castaneda has inspired countless readers with his awareness-expanding experiences.

Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan

Carlos Castanada was a student of anthropology when he met Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui shaman and the inspiration for Castanada’s The Teachings of Don Juan. In this controversial work, Castanada relays his experiences being challenged by his mentor on his perception of the world and all living things in it.

Whisperings of the Dragon: Shamanic Practices to Awaken Your Primal Power

Your journey through the Eight Gates of Dreaming Awake will open the door for your primal essence to return to your present moment continuum. This audiobook delivers ancient shamanic wisdom and quantic insights that allow precious points of arrival to be sustained within the power of one's omnipresence. The techniques in this book can be successfully applied to any ideology, religion, or philosophy.

Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self

Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self is the account of an extraordinarily talented lucid dreamer who goes beyond the boundaries of both psychology and religion. In the process, he stumbles upon the Inner Self. While lucid (consciously aware) in the dream state and able to act and interact with dream figures, objects, and settings, dream expert Robert Waggoner experienced something transformative and unexpected. He was able to interact consciously with the dream observer.

The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception is a new kind of autobiography - an interdimensional odyssey that weaves its magical threads through one's own existence in a way that has to be experienced to be believed. In this revised edition, Lujan clarifies and expands upon key elements of his teachings. Listeners familiar with the original will be surprised at the awakenings that unfold via powerful additions woven throughout the text.

Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge : A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution

Terence McKenna hypothesizes that as the North African jungles receded, giving way to savannas and grasslands near the end of the most recent ice age, a branch of our arboreal primate ancestors left the forest canopy and began living in the open areas beyond. There they experimented with new varieties of foods as they adapted, physically and mentally, to the environment. Among the new foods found in this environment were psilocybin-containing mushrooms.

Shadows in the Twilight: Conversations with a Shaman

When W. L. Ham approaches the Nagual Lujan Matus for insight into enigmatic events that have marked his awareness, what he learns revolutionizes everything he thought he knew. Realizing that he has found an authentic guide, Bill enters into a intensive apprenticeship and directly begins to experience the multiplex of luminous interactivity that is our living matrix as never before. Like countless others, Bill had been galvanized when concepts like "the energy double', "dreaming awareness', and "first and second attention', were introduced in the 1960s.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

In 1957, four years before his death, Carl Gustav Jung, psychiatrist and psychologist, began writing his life story. But what started as an exercise in autobiography soon morphed into an altogether more profound undertaking.

Autobiography of a Yogi

When Autobiography of a Yogi first appeared in 1946, it was acclaimed as a landmark work in its field. The New York Times hailed it as "a rare account". Newsweek pronounced it "fascinating". The San Francisco Chronicle declared, "Yogananda presents a convincing case for yoga, and those who 'came to scoff' may remain 'to pray." Today it is still one of the most widely read and respected books ever published on the wisdom of the East.

The Law and the Promise

Neville Goddard was one of the most extraordinary and ardently practical spiritual thinkers of the past century. Writing and lecturing under the solitary name Neville, this modern mystic enthralled audiences with one simple, radical idea: the human imagination is God. Here is a new narration of Neville's final full-length book, The Law and the Promise, originally published in 1961. This is the mystic at the peak of his abilities, providing ideas and examples of how everyday people succeeded using his methods.

The Mastery of Self: A Toltec Guide to Personal Freedom

The ancient Toltecs believed that life, as we perceive it, is a dream. We each live in our own personal dream, and these come together to form the dream of the planet, or the world in which we live. Problems arise when our perception of the dream becomes clouded with negativity, drama, and judgment (of ourselves and others), because it's in these moments of suffering that we have forgotten that we are the architects of our own reality and we have the power to change our dream if we choose.

Somatic Descent: Experiencing the Ultimate Intelligence of the Body

With Somatic Descent, you are invited to tune in to the natural wisdom of your body, refine and amplify it, and explore it fully. In this program pioneering teacher Dr. Reggie Ray presents a fascinating audio program on this rich dimension of Tibetan Buddhism: how to go beyond the veil of the thinking mind to tap the wondrous yet wholly trustworthy domain of your body.

The Book of Mastery

The channeled literature of Paul Selig - who receives clairaudient dictation from unseen intellects called the Guides - has quickly become the most important and celebrated expression of channeling since A Course in Miracles rose to prominence in the 1970s. Selig's three previous books - I Am the Word, The Book of Love and Creation, and The Book of Knowing and Worth - have won a growing following around the world for their depth, intimacy, and psychological insight. The Book of Mastery provides a deeply practical prescription for heightening your abilities, aptitudes, and sense of personal excellence.

Out of Your Mind

With Out of Your Mind: Essential Listening from the Alan Watts Audio Archives, you are invited to immerse yourself in 12 of this legendary thinker's pinnacle teaching sessions about how to break through the limits of the rational mind and begin expanding your awareness and appreciation for the Great Game unfolding all around us.

Immortal Man: The Greatest Lectures by the Visionary Mystic

Immortal Man collects lectures from the last years of Neville's life representing the teacher in his full maturity. Available for the first time in audio, this extraordinary selection of lessons gives you a radical new understanding of your own possibilities. Neville takes you into the realm of pure consciousness, where self and Self are one and reality is created through the dynamic of your awakened imagination. As Neville taught with extraordinary originality, what you see as "natural" in your imagination is actualized in the world.

Reality Creation and Manifestation

This is a complete compendium on the reality creation teachings and organizes hundreds of articles and research papers written over the past 20 years. Use this as a guide and training manual on reality creating, the law of attraction, manifesting, consciousness and achieving your dreams and goals through the power of focus, imagination, emotion, belief and action.

Siddhartha

Siddhartha, the ninth book written by Herman Hesse, is about a young Indian boy who leaves his home in hopes of finding enlightenment with the wise "Goutama", which in this story is the Buddha. After learning what he can from Goutama, he decides to go off into the busy city, and leads a life of greed and lust. When he realizes that the lifestyle is not fulfilling, and he reflects on his life, he goes to a river and contemplates suicide.

Publisher's Summary

For over 40 years, Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan has inspired audiences to expand their world view beyond traditional Western forms. Originally published as Castaneda’s master’s thesis in anthropology, Teachings documents Castaneda’s supposed apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, don Juan Matus. Dividing the work into two sections, Castaneda begins by describing don Juan’s philosophies, then continues with his own reflections.

What the Critics Say

"It's impossible to view the world in quite the same way after reading him.... If Castaneda is correct, there is another world, a sometimes beautiful and sometimes frightening world, right before our eyes at this moment - if only we could see." (Chicago Tribune)

I was very fortunate to have actually met the author. This was sometime in the late seventies or early eighties. I was living with my teacher, who was a native american medicine person. When this odd sort of person just showed up one day and stayed for... somewhere around one or two weeks. He would always sit away from the main group and simply watch, listen, and write. I do not wish to elaborate here, but I have to say that the personal experiences I had when I would notice him were enough to make me believe that Mr. Castaneda did indeed have a spiritual gift and that he had also received some very real training. He ended up leaving a notebook behind when he left and I did read what he had written. One page included an unpublished declaration of release, by Don Juan. To this very day, I still use it!

I'm probably more enlightened than I am intellectual so the first 80% of the book I really understood and enjoyed while the last 20% I had trouble understanding. All in all, an incredible insight into the world of shamans.

There are entities living in hallucinogenic plants. One of them has a lizard. You must listen very carefully to what this lizard says and do exactly what it tells you. Of course, you have no hope of ever achieving enlightenment if you and this lizard dont click, or if you fail to inhale or imbible this specific plant.

If I had access to these plants, I might conceivably find a Blou Koggelmander lizard and it might even dance for me, providing we have a good connection, and my cats don't eat it first.

I have no idea what I was meant to have gleaned from these "trips" or how to make any sense of it. So what when he turned into a crow, or managed bodily to fly around? How very irritating. I have even less idea of what this book was trying to tell me. The only part which had any reasonable cognitive content was the Addendum. Couldn't he just have written that, and saved us the punishment?

Toltec wisdom can be rather difficult to grasp at times, but this book is an exercise in exasperation and futility. Perhaps those interested in experimenting with these plants could find more value in it.

Although it was adequately read, I found the narrator's voice to be rather too forceful, lecturing and hard.

I really like books that show the world from an unusual perspective. This is the (allegedly) true account of the apprenticeship of Carlos Castaneda, an anthropology student, to a Yaqui Shaman named Don Juan. It is well read and enjoyable.

What I liked best was the contrast of cultures. So, after Castaneda is scared witless by an encounter with the peyote god "Mescalito" who "teaches a man how to live", the following day he keeps asking "does Mescalito really exist?".

For Don Juan this question is totally missing the point "did you not see Mescalito?" His concern is on what Mescalito communicated and the significance of the encounter for a "man of knowledge". It is the clash of modern rational science with aboriginal religion, in a still enchanted world. In the end it becomes too much for the young student and, fearing he is going mad, he terminates his apprenticeship.

This is a book of its time, written in the early 1960s when people were experimenting with altered states and strange religions. It does give a glimpse of an aboriginal worldview populated by spirits and "powers" who can be called on for help as allies or must be confronted and overcome as adversaries.

I very much enjoyed the narrative section of the book, which raised many questions for me about religion, science and reality - and purpose in life. Sadly the "analysis" section at the end of the book avoids these ontological questions, attributing Casteneda's experiences to "suggestion" combined with the effect of powerful psychoactive plants, and thus is much less interesting, though luckily short.

I will be getting the next in the series, when he returns to his apprenticeship, but not for a while. Overall it is a thought provoking book, very well narrated, but a little strange.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

m

three legged cross, United Kingdom

12/27/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"a brilliant story with many lessons"

Would you consider the audio edition of The Teachings of Don Juan to be better than the print version?

have not read the book

What did you like best about this story?

being on a spiritual / shamanic path I have come across this book several times in the past and have considered reading it but have been put off by the bad reviews. I decided that alot of books especially on these type of topics have some bad reviews. These bad reviews are normally from academics or people from a religious back ground who are ignorant to the topic that they are criticising. Sometimes the bad reviews are from people who are not happy about outsiders wrting about a topic that they were not born into. I do not know if the story in this book is real or fictional. I do however know that I learned alot from the book and have come away with a much better understanding of the world of a Yaqui shaman. This book is great for someone who is on a shamanic path and wants to understand the heart and discipline that is required to be a true shaman. Most of us in the west may become shamanic practitioners but this is on a whole other level.

The second part of the book is more for a student of anthropolgy or someone who wants to know the ins and outs of the plants used in the book. There will not be many readers in that category who have the patience or understanding for this. This does not mean I will review this part of the book badly. I am glad I have finally bought this book and will definitely buy the other books from this author

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Sharon jeffrey

11/16/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"most interesting"

the first part was most interesting and enjoyable however the 2nd part I found difficulties to follow and to fishish and had to relisten to some parts.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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